THE MEDIA BUSINESS: Advertising; First Glimpse Of Murdoch's Mirabella

By RANDALL ROTHENBERG

Published: February 7, 1989

GRACE MIRABELLA, the former editor of Vogue, lifted the veil from her much-awaited new magazine late last week and revealed a cover without a woman on it.

Instead, the prototype issue of Mirabella has on its bright, white front only a tantalizing, faceless impression from a pair of lips. Whether young lips or old, atop a model wearing Lacroix or Lauren, is unknown.

By giving the ''Mirabella woman'' neither shape nor form nor age, the people at Murdoch Magazines, which will begin publishing Mirabella in June, hope to attract a wide body of readers and advertisers. They also hope to avoid - publicly, at least -any comparisons between Mirabella and Vogue, the Conde Nast magazine from which Ms. Mirabella, 58 years old, was ousted in June after 17 years at the top.

Leaving the ''Mirabella woman'' to the reader's imagination has another purpose. Ms. Mirabella and Ms. Lewit-Nirenberg stressed that they wanted to dispel ''a popular myth'' about their emerging publication.

''We are not - emphasize not -going up against Lear's,'' said Ms. Lewit-Nirenberg, who is 44. She was referring to a year-old magazine aimed at women over 40. ''I strongly believe that people do not dress, do not get up, do not make love, based on their age.''

But the Murdoch people are taking the risk that marketers, ever desirous of directing appeals at finer and finer targets, will be confused by a publication that refuses to identify its readers graphically. ''We have a challenge to position the magazine without age-specificity,'' Ms. Lewit-Nirenberg conceded.

So while Mirabella is aimed at the ''30-to-35-plus segment,'' its prototype issue, which is being shown to advertisers for the first time this week, walks a delicate line, appealing to women's maturity not through its models but through the substance of its articles.

For example, Mirabella's dummy issue contains a book excerpt - from Tom Wolfe's next novel, no less.

Of course, magazine prototypes are the literary equivalent of wishing wells, featuring nothing more than headlines and fake type. But if the Wolfe excerpt is not real, the desire behind it is.

Ms. Mirabella, stylishly dressed in a blue jacket, black turtleneck and gray slacks in the magazine's freshly painted Manhattan office, replied emphatically, ''Yes, yes, yes,'' when asked if her new magazine would contain more text than her old one. She said that fully 48 percent of the magazine's content would be devoted to subjects other than fashion and personal style. ''A very curious mind -that's how we see this reader,'' she said.

In the dummy issue, that curiosity is sated by a ''conversation'' between Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain; a series of single-page interviews with experts in various fields headlined ''One-on-One,'' and photo essays featuring the artist Georgia O'Keeffe and the palace at Versailles.

Even the prototype's fashion and style pieces have twists. One highlights science fiction's effect on international fashion; another illuminates the subject of lipstick with comments by women famous and unknown. ''We're trying to do these features in a little less plastic way,'' Ms. Mirabella said. ''We don't simply want the color of the month. Lipstick is not just about beauty; it's about self-esteem as well.''

When the real Mirabella makes its debut in five months, it will have a circulation rate base of 225,000 and no dummy type. Ms. Lewit-Nirenberg acknowledged that the prospect of finishing that issue, and stocking it with ads, filled her with trepidation.

''This is not the second coming,'' she cautioned, trying to lessen expectations.

Ms. Mirabella raised an eyebrow. ''It's not?!'' she asked, and then laughed.